Lay Me to Rest
by shutterbones
Summary: A short story depicting a scene in which Isthalla provokes Cullen after their return to the Tower alone in his chambers at night. Her intentions are to provoke him into killing her, but instead prove some very different results through Cullen's POV..


_No.._ he begged. _No._ But it was untrue. His pleas would go unanswered, and his desperation uncured. Her hands were on him now, _Oh Maker_, he couldn't withstand it. Maybe once, but not now, not so amply displayed, so viciously physical and real against the stretch of his palm. His eyes grew wide as she guided his hand across the breadth of her chest. He trembled. He recoiled.

_Maker, stop me. Help me, please!_

His mind screamed against it, he begged and pleaded with himself to simply pull away, yet his hands remained anchored against her skin. He wanted to scream in his misery, in this unforgiving agony. His hands were on fire, his lungs were squeezed shut, and his heart was ready to explode from his chest. This was utter _agony_, how could he enjoy this? He rebelled and refused with all his might, but he knew his cursed body was already reacting to the natural stimulation, that accursed mortal wound forcing his wicked hands.

He shut his eyes to block her out, and keep away her devil gaze that whispered nothing but deception and lies. His hands shook as she forced him to explore the width of her bare collarbone, then lower to her breasts, and finally across the plane of her smooth, white stomach. _Feel the sin, Cullen.. _she told him. _Press against it.. _she taunted on the smug snarl of her red lips. Oh, wicked creature. Devil creature with sinful eyes. Maker save him, even in the pitch darkness behind his lids her hands forced him to envision every crystal clear detail he so ardently tried to block out. It sent painful needles up his fingertips like ice. Like fire.

She released him, and as if a spell had been broken he opened his eyes and jerked his hands away, reclaiming them to the cradled hollow against his chest. Not a second later did he fall into another state of shock as his unguarded eyes met the visual plane of her absolutely, terrifyingly naked body crouched over him like a hungry predator. Before the shock could even subside, she reached out a hand and shoved him flat against the bed, forcing him to temporarily stare up at the ceiling and pray to the Maker for forgiveness. Too petrified to move, he stayed completely still as she snaked her body over the top of him and leaned down to whisper in his ear.

"I will have you," her cool and viperous voice resounded against his eardrum. She was full of hatred, and seethed poison off the very breath of her lips. No affection shed from her resonating whisper, so heavily weighted upon his heart and mind. This was not the woman he knew, nor the friend he once claimed. She had been pushed, and broken, and within that brokenness a great monster had erupted. It sought revenge, satisfaction; greed. What had become of her? He had dreamed of the day he could hold this woman in his arms, yet in that moment he wanted nothing more than to get away from her, to be rid of her tempered poison.

She began to slink downwards, deep into that forbidden chasm he could not stop. In his brief panic, he grabbed fistfuls of her hair in each hand and yanked her back up, eyes wild with distress, silently begging her to stop. To stop this madness before darker sins were beheaded. Where he had hoped to reach some small shred of sanity left in her, somewhere deep within the confines of her conscious where remembered kindness could be found that he knew to lurk within her heart, he found a solid stone wall. Her eyes were black as coal, and glistened with a light of treachery and malcontent. She was glazed over by her madness, by her neediness and vile. He knew in that moment, nothing was going to stop her intentions, whatever they may be.

So marred and unearthed by her gaze, he let go of her hair in an instant and watched as a sickening, angry smile pulled at her lips. She had no intentions of negotiating, this much he understood. The very thought of willingly letting himself be overtaken by this monstrous persona was sickening, but he knew she would have it with or without his permission. She was not a creature of patience nor understanding, not now. Maybe once…

Now, in this moment, she intended to consume him. She would force his hand, and destroy him in the process if necessary. He could not contend with the anger in her eyes, the lust in her grasp as she retreated lower down the farthest reaches of his stomach. He was weak, so insufferably weak and she knew it. She reveled in it.

As his grip loosened to an almost unnoticeable, bare trace, the fire and brimstone of her grip lessened. The harshness of her teeth biting his skin turned to caresses, and he felt suddenly sick to his stomach once the realization set in. She was offering a collaboration; a medium plane along this road of treachery. The dead weight of her meaning fell on his conscious, instantaneously begging him to pull away, to never give into such a sinful pact. _No.._ his mind immediately screamed, but the words never pressed past his lips.

If he submitted-if he…_succumbed_, she wouldn't hurt him. All he had to do, all he simply had to do… was to stop struggling.

_Maker help me.._

Tears pricked in his eyes as she whispered something low and incomprehensible into the lowest plane of his stomach, spreading her hot breath like needles across his skin. He felt empty, helpless. Void of anything remotely close to control, and all he could do was lie motionless as the sickness overtook him. He didn't want to be here, he wanted to close his eyes and wake up from this nightmare, but even in the darkness he felt her lips breath a raspy, heartless laugh across the inner part of his thigh.

_Maker forgive me.._

He squeezed his eyes shut until he could hear his head pounding. His hands found their way into the crumpled, distressed bedding beneath them both, and dug in mechanical hands to keep from feeling like he was falling; slipping closer into darkness. Her wicked taunts had already produced a half-erection, forcing his shame even closer to her skin. She pressed against him in a mocking manner, knowing he hated it, knowing what kind of sickening satisfaction she would get from watching him suffer. What a cruel, wicked beast she was, and he hated her for what she had done to him.

How could she do this to him.. He wanted her to be damned, wanted her to be dragged back to the depths where she belonged. He wanted to wish the human side of him away, the one that so ardently defied his screams to ignore the beguiling woman before him and instead succumbed to her touch as a hapless, greedy child. He wanted to kill her, but he couldn't move, and her lips were trailing entirely too low on his hips, and _Maker's blood-_

He couldn't fight her anymore.

Though he struggled, and though he gripped the blankets with all his might and groaned, his struggle was no longer for his righteousness. Her mouth was hot and warm, and _Maker _it was the most blissful pain he had ever been ashamed enough to experience. He didn't want to enjoy this, and even pushed against it in small, withering breaths in attempts to strain any last hopes of resistance. This was against everything, _everything _he stood for, yet even as he told himself this he found his throat gurgling a throaty, desperate response at her coaxing.

Her lips, her hot breath and wet tongue… all too much, far too much for him to possibly handle. His groans were pitiful, whimpering attempts lost between trying to sound like whines for help and cries of pleasure. The viperous, damned devil of a witch was winning, and there was nothing he could do to stop her but writhe about and dig white-knuckled fists deeper into the blanket. But _Maker,_ moving only made it worse, and wounded by his own error, he retreated back to his weak method of methodically gripping and letting go of the bunched-up sheets until he made indentions into his palms.

_M-Maker stop me.._

Just as he reached an indefinable peak of blistering ecstasy, she moved away, and nearly had him at a whimper for the torture she had brought and undoubtedly planned to continue. _Just leave me to my shame.._ he wanted to say, but no words could be forced past his lips. All that remained and still uttered were huffs of heated, gasping breath between gritted teeth. He could not speak, did not dare speak should his voice betray him along with his body. His heart thrashed in his chest, his skin tingled, and his breath was as ragged and wild as a beast's shudder.

He could not even be disgusted with himself anymore; any hope of returning was no longer in sight. Not even a remote glimmer of possibility still stretched before his horizon, because now that horizon began to blur between the lines of sin and satisfaction. Something caged began to twist and stir within him; a primal necessity deep within the confines of a long-forgotten mortal conscious.

The struggle no longer came between whether or not he could resist her; it was now a battle to restrain himself. Suddenly the horror of the situation seemed lessened, and dulled to the back of his mind until it became a mere shadow against the far walls of his conscious. A whisper. It began to cloud over his thoughts until he even wondered why he had resisted so violently in the first place. The sensation, the very sickness she had suffered, it now began to creep under his own skin and drive gnawing teeth into his very core. He ached to grab her, to reach out and wrap needy hands around her face and force her back down to finish the corruption she had started, and relieve him of his pressure. She, however, had a mind of her own.

Before he had a chance to let his thoughts connect, she had climbed back on top of him and straddled his bare waist with her thighs. There was something so chillingly primal about having a woman's bare thighs wrapped about you, forcing you into a pleasurable stillness you did not want to escape. The warmth from the inner part of her legs clawed over his belly in waves, licking down his hips and into his throbbing erection as the heat steadied the fire.

He leaned up with intentions to grab her and push her away, but recoiled back down in shock as she shifted her body forward to press something warm and soft against the shaft of his sin. This, which she had brought of him from the chasms of fire, and brought birth to something so wicked and sinful. He wanted to bury it within her, violently, headily, and force himself into her as a knife into the wound. The Maker would not help him now, and nor would he care to take it if it were offered at this point. He hated how wonderful it felt, but he wanted more; the greed spread through him like wildfire. The pressure rose again, higher, the more she pressed herself against him and taunted him, tortured him like the wicked beast she was, the less he felt the need to restrain himself. The feeling begin to grow.

If the sensation of her warm skin and taunting invitation repeatedly being pressed against his own wasn't enough, surely the vision of the wicked woman hovering above him would be his ultimate death. Under the moonlight, she was a perfect vision of pale beauty, the naked milk of her skin as white as the moon. Her raven hair fanned out like claws, fierce and wildly entangled around her face, and her lips as perfectly shaped as a red rose as she bent down to kiss his neck and send him into another convulsion for control and restraint.

All too suddenly she lifted herself up, and with a simple shift of her hips, fell slowly back down upon his shaft until she had buried him completely inside of her. The abrupt change sent such a shuddering shock down his spine he cried out her name, ending in a throaty groan of exasperation as he dug his fingers into the soft flesh of her legs and tried to keep himself from slipping off whatever plane of sanity was left of him. There were many sensations he could account for in the sake of human pleasure, but this was something he had never even remotely experienced.

He rode out a second wave of shuddering as he took in the feeling, and realized he was inside of her. He could feel her, all around him. He was inside of the most beautiful creature in the world, and he had no words to utter other than shaky whispers of breath. All he could manage to do was tremble and reach out shaking, needy hands to slide around her waist and instinctively thrust her forward to initiate the change.

At first he had no control. He could do this, he thought. He could stay sane, and stay in control and get it over with and rid himself of this burning need and banish it forever. But as she drove on, ripping new and open wounds of fire through his core, he felt entirely too trapped in his skin. Something was burning, clawing, scraping for the surface and could not be contained within his skin. It was going to tear through his skin at any moment, he was certain of it.

As the fiery sensation increased and began to creep further into the farthest reaches of his body, he felt his mind slipping off a permanent edge. A great, dark beast began to emerge from somewhere and claw its way up. The harder she ground her hips against him, the more he lost control. Wet heat began to slick within and between their bodies the longer she dug into him, as did the sounds as they began to slowly creep back into existence and utter from her beautiful lips like a symphony. He dug his fingers into her back and strained to keep it down, but _Maker _it was like a fire burning through his insides, a great eruption of molten lava stemming from the darkest confines between their bodies.

He let out whimpers of defeat until they began to turn into throaty growls, and finally succumbed and let himself shout and scream obscenities. He couldn't _take _this anymore, _Maker _the woman was going to kill him! He let out cry after cry, feeling the sensation build, wanting to just feel it but terrified of the mysterious sensation beginning to build, an anger and ferocity he would not be able to control once lost.

All it took was a single glance, a single stem of curiosity resulted from him opening tightly shut eyes to look above himself and see her there, illuminated above him, and all was lost. Whatever caged monstrosity he had tried to contain was let loose, and he no longer had the mind to stop it. He had to have her, all of her, right at that very moment.

She knew as well as he-this was not soft, gentle love. This was raw and feral greed. He needed this just as much as she did. This was a violent sexual affair, and nothing more.

_Nothing more…_

His last conscious efforts turned into action as instinct took over and he grappled her by the arms before abruptly twisting around and shoving her beneath him. A snarl pulled at his lips, briefly mirrored in her own ferocious gaze before she flickered briefly on fear and surprise. He saw a vague smirk pull on her lips after a moment of understanding the role reversal, then clouded behind a haze of heat and ragged breath. His hands wrapped tightly around her hips, nearly crushing her as he gritted his teeth and forced himself back inside of her, grinding so harshly into her he felt the strain of her inner thighs against his stomach. She uttered a cry of surprise and what felt like pleasure, but he didn't care. He had to destroy her, devour her, and consume her completely or he would scream.

Driven on by his primal needs, he thrust until she herself screamed, until she bellowed and cried out his name. Let her cry, let her beg until she arched her back and pleaded for mercy, he didn't care. Let her be driven to madness as he had; all he wanted was the burning. Such burning, _Maker's blood _the damned burning!

She reached up to grasp his neck, but instead he snatched up her wrists in each hand and slammed her back against the bed with a snarl. She cried and arched her back, and again and again spilled a hot white sensation over him inside of her, but not his own. This had been her release. He would have her screaming, writhing, and crying in pleasure before he reached his own. Only then, only then he would have her-until every little moan of ecstasy had her reduced to her knees and she begged forgiveness. Damn her, _Damn her!_

Another shuddering cry followed by hot liquid and he couldn't hold back anymore. He was a monstrosity, unable to cur the beast tearing into her, against her, and inside of her. He had her so tightly wound into his arms, he couldn't remember when he'd lifted her off the bed to hold her against him. Her breath was on his neck, ragged and groaning. Nails tearing into his back. Violent, grinding thrusts as he pushed harder; deeper.

He dug his grip into her thighs and threw her back against the bed before slamming into her one more time, and like a great flood erupting, something burst forth as hot as magma and released within her. She arched into him as he nearly crushed her against his chest and felt her nails tear down the entire length of his back with a scream. And it was done; the sin completed as he came down from a blinding high and blinked away the haze of his vision. Like a sleepwalker returning to the waking world, he blinked away the fog just as the last bits of euphoria faded away, and leaned forward to press his damp forehead against her chest. He breathed, deep and full, and shut his eyes. Suddenly the world felt clearer, more sane, and less like it was falling off the edge of reason. He felt the solid ground beneath him once more, and stayed there to revel in the stillness of the moment. He breathed, and felt the anger subside, and the monster grow subdued and quiet. He felt remembered.

Every sensation and sound no longer tortured him on a needle-thin surface. He hardly noticed as she reached up a weary hand to run through his hair. The gesture felt… soft. He was distilled by it, and relented by sinking into her with a great sigh. She welcomed him with caring arms that tended around him not as a wicked demon, but as would a loving wife. Together, they lay motionless, and put their demons to rest in the spaces between each other's arms.


End file.
